For consumers and businesses alike, tax preparation and compliance can be time consuming and difficult. Tax paying entities are required to aggregate large and sometimes disparate sets of financial data and to perform numerous error-prone calculations. Periodic preparation of financial returns, manual data entry, and record keeping also require significant resources and are prone to significant risk.
Tax preparation and financial management software can help to mitigate some, but not all, of this risk. Tax preparation software, for example, automatically performs many of the complex financial calculations required to complete a tax form. Additionally, financial software can electronically file some documents with the appropriate government agency and save electronic copies of the documents in a database on a user's personal computer.
Modern computing devices have become an indispensible tool of the average consumer. Many consumers now use a personal computing device, such as a laptop, to perform a variety of financial management tasks online. More recently, mobile devices have become an extremely disruptive force in the realm of finance. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers provide location-based services and real-time connectivity. Thus, a user may check the value of a financial portfolio, purchase a sale item on a favorite website, or search for a nearby merchant location without being tethered to a WIFI connection or a particular location.